Five Buildings Zuko Didn't Burn Down
by Rashaka
Summary: Redbrunja gave me the title, and this is what came out. Five buildings Zuko didn't burn down, some are AU and some fit canon. Part three: the forest rebels’ hideout, occupied territory, age 16.
1. The House of Aila

Some are AU, some fit with canon. You can sort out which is which.

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**Five Buildings Zuko Didn't Burn Down **

**One**

**The House of Aila**

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The island house in summer, age 4:

When Zuko was a boy—a bare spit of a thing, with skinny white arms and eyes more bronze than gold—before his sister went mad or his cousin went dead, he caused a fire that destroyed priceless family artifacts and turned his grandmother Aila's birth house to cinders. As long as he lived, beginning that summer on Ember Island, Zuko was forever destroying the history and the accoutrements that he loved. A summer retreat, a library, a royal palace, looming gates that barred his uncle from the throne: eventually, the prince would raze them all. But that was the future, and when the home on Ember Island caught fire he was a boy like any other in his nation.

It happened in the quiet rustle of night and bed sheets: he tossed and turned, he shuddered and thrashed. Mere days had passed since the fire manifested in Prince Zuko's hands, and now the power crept along his veins, through his dreams, and out into the world. The curtains around his mattress caught first, then the bedside table. Flames leapt to the walls, to the window dressings, and the crown prince woke to a world of gold and orange. He didn't stop the fire—he had not the strength or the knowledge—but nor did he cry out for help. He could have wept for his mother, or screamed for a servant, but in the end Zuko did what lonely boys do: he ran, and he hid, and he waited for the flames to disappear or to eat him alive.

It might have been hours or it might have been minutes before his father found him, terrified and only four, shut in a kitchen cabinet and light-headed from smoke. Ozai plucked his son's pale body—white and black and bronze, limbs and pajamas and fright—from the shelter of the cupboard, carried him through the burning wreckage, and promised without words that there was nothing to fear in this world.

The estate's remains smoldered, the royal family left, and Zuko never stepped foot on Ember Island again. The home of his grandmother had burned, as one day the home of his grandfather would. It was almost prophecy, if anyone had cared to see it as such—though of course, at the time, none did.

Zuko was only a child, a boy with a fire dream, and there were plenty boys at that age. Not for many years would he become a man with a fire's hunger.


	2. The Tower of Babel

As you can tell, my obsession with writing fic about the prodigal prince and his fucked up family continues. You probably dream of the day I'll write a Sokka story, don't you? Well... don't hold your breath. Boy's not nearly fucked up enough yet.

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**Five Buildings Zuko Didn't Burn Down **

**Two**

**The Tower of Babel  
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The Fire Temple's Capitol Library, Geological & Geographical Studies Wing, age 7:

When he was an older boy, head filled with stories, heart brave with a mother's love, Zuko unintentionally did more damage to the rebel movement abroad than his sister could ever hope to, no matter how many cities she silently captured.

In his eagerness to learn of the world (he dreamed of being an explorer and a conqueror, of visiting other continents and foreign peoples) he wandered from his tutors until he reached the portion of the Capitol Library where all the maps and all the charts and all the books on exploring waited for his eager fingers. He sat in an aisle and crossed his legs, the scrawny limbs a littler taller every day, but still so small for his age. In his lap and sprinkled around the prince were tomes and treasures of ancient pathways, forgotten mountains, and secret forests. He stayed there for half a day, and even though he was the cause, ultimately not even Zuko could say when the fire began, or why. He wasn't dreaming (he hadn't had a fire dream since he was little, since the beach) and there was no one to fight. But it came anyway, and it burned.

It burned Zuko's bounty right into the carpet: row after row, stack after stack. He made it out alright, with scrolls and manuscripts stuffed inside his shirt and under his arms. The royal librarians had found him at last, and they darted by him without glance or acknowledgment, as dismissive of the undersized crown prince as every other person of authority in the palace. They didn't even bother to glare at him, and because they never looked, they couldn't know that he was crying. Not for the punishment he'd never receive or disappointment on his father's face, but for the same reason they would come to weep in the months that followed: knowledge lost forever, words turned to ash under his care.

Because Prince Zuko's mistake, which only amounted to a few charred shelves and mild smoke sickness for the book-keepers (hardly a destroyed building), gave Lord Azulon the idea to censor the cartographers and the navigators, the intellectuals and the traders and the sea captains.

Across the world, maps of the Fire Nation disappeared.


	3. The Fortress of Pan

Like I said in the first part: some of these are AU, and some are not. I'll give you a hint: check the title again before guessing. Chapter 1 never happened, for example, and only in a story that didn't happen would Ozai be the father he never was..

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**Five Buildings Zuko Didn't Burn Down**

** Three**

**The Fortress of Pan**

The forest rebels' hideout, occupied territory, age 16:

In mid-winter Zuko's retinue moved steadily through the Northern Earth Kingdom waters on the trail of the flying beast, and stopped in Yangtai mere weeks after the three-way encounter with the pirate crew and the Avatar. What had once been a prospering Fire Nation settlers' village at the mouth of the Yangtaiko river delta had become a flooded cesspool of mold and eroded landscape. Some vicious fool blew the damn, and all the money Zuko hoped to spend to re-supply his ship was as good as mud to them. They needed every scrap themselves to survive, and an exiled prince had no power to regrow crop fields or build up houses.

When it was clear the town of Yangtai had nothing to offer, General Iroh sent hunting parties into the nearby forests with orders to secure enough wide game to tide them over until next landfall. Zuko spent the hours looming over maps and charts of the Earth Kingdom, plotting the possible routes his quarry might take on what already appeared to be a steadily Northward trek. He was still in the cabin, hand cramped and neck strained, when his uncle delivered the news that two squad returned with fresh provisions and one squad had disappeared entirely.

Prince Zuko led another team into the forest to search out the missing soldiers, and after warnings from the villagers and hours of tracking they discovered the truth: a troop of children had robbed the prince's hunting party and made a hostage of his first lieutenant. Zuko knew they were only children, but they killed like assassins and they bargained like pirates. He tracked them through the night, he rescued his officer, and as soon as he got the chance he burned their thatch tree houses to ash on the wind.

Of the mad young man—who could have been the prince's twin in age and anger—Zuko did not speak, but there was blood on his broadswords when Iroh saw him again. They buried three soldiers the next morning. The prince watched the ceremony with the poisoned arrows he'd dug from their chests snapping like reeds between his fingers.


End file.
